Copycat justice has turned US counties into execution hotspots

The odds of getting a death sentence aren’t the same in all areas that have the death penalty

Andrew Lichtenstein/Polaris/eyevine

By Jessica Hamzelou

A handful of hotspots carry out a disproportionate number of executions in the US, but these areas don’t tend to have particularly high rates of murder. Instead, human bias seems to have led a small number of counties to become far more likely than others to follow through on a death sentence.

The death penalty is legal in 31 of the 50 US states, where it is given to some people convicted of murder. Now an …

Article amended on
26 January 2018

We corrected the locations of counties in Texas and Missouri with high execution rates